Skip to main content
Main

Fish Stock

A stock made from small fish, onions, tomatoes, herbs, and seasonings, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clam and crab share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Fish Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Place a saucepan over medium heat and add the butter and sliced onion.

  2. Add the sliced tomatoes and various small fish.

  3. Cook until the onions are well browned.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the sweet herbs, salt, and pepper.

  2. Pour in enough water to make the desired amount of stock.

  3. Cook for 30 minutes.

  4. Pound the mixture with a wooden pestle.

  5. Strain the stock.

  6. Cook again until it jellies.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clam + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Oyster + crabtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Small fish and shellfish
Release savory flavor and gelatin-rich body into the stock as they cook down.
Sweet butter
Carries flavor and adds richness as the onion browns in the pan.
Onion
Browning builds deep, sweet savory notes that color and flavor the stock.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a rounded sweetness that balances the fish flavor.

The step that matters

Cook until the onions are well browned. Browning the onions through the Maillard reaction builds the deep savory flavor the stock depends on. Pale onions give a flat, washed-out stock.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, fish, oyster, clam, smelt, crab):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, fish, oyster, clam, smelt, crab. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes